by Gav Thorpe
Nestor glanced west towards the city and then looked east where dust clouds and smoke could be seen at the foot of the ridge. Dawn was slowly spreading across the plain, revealing the vehicles and mobs of the orks a few kilometres away.
‘It is unlikely that reinforcements will arrive before the orks, Brother-Apothecary,’ said Sarpedon, guessing Nestor’s thoughts. ‘Master Belial is extricating such squads as are available from the fighting in the docks. Withdrawing troops from such a position is time-consuming if they are to arrive here intact. It is imperative that the orks do not gain any foothold on Koth Ridge. If they do so, they will be able to attack our reinforcements as they arrive.’
‘I will keep the brothers fighting whatever the orks bring against us, brother,’ said Nestor. ‘While a Dark Angel still breathes, no ork will set foot on this ridge. I am still concerned for the wellbeing of our allies. Casualties amongst the defence troopers will be much higher. We are relying upon their continued survival to add weight to our position. I believe that we should provide their medical officers with whatever assistance we can to ensure that happens.’
‘The Piscina force is suffering heavily in the city; we cannot divert supplies from that battlezone. It would be self-defeating to shore up the defence here only by allowing the orks to break free of the city. The Piscina officers will have to do what they can with the resources at hand, Brother Nestor.’
‘I understand,’ said the Apothecary. ‘Where do you wish me to take my place in the defence?’
Sarpedon’s grey eyes scanned up and down the ridge. A thin smile twisted his lips as his gaze fell upon Squad Vigilus at the heart of the defensive line. The Terminators from the Deathwing Company wore huge suits of bone-white multilayered armour, capable of shrugging off fire from anti-tank weapons and heavy artillery.
‘I think that Sergeant Scalprum and his Devastators would benefit the most from your presence,’ said the Chaplain.
Nestor nodded in agreement. It was unlikely the Deathwing would require Nestor’s attention given the apparent lack of heavy weapons possessed by the orks.
‘The blessing of the Lion upon you,’ said Sarpedon, patting a hand on Nestor’s shoulder pad.
‘May you stand tall in his eternal gaze, Brother-Chaplain,’ Nestor replied.
The two parted and Nestor continued towards Sergeant Scalprum. The Devastators’ leader had split his warriors between two crate-lined emplacements, one covering the broken-down ruins of an old hunting lodge half a kilometre down the slope, the other with a wide arc of fire overlooking the approach to the line of troopers to the south. Each combat squad of five Space Marines included a heavy bolter and a plasma cannon, the first for cutting through the massed ork infantry, the second for destroying their light vehicles.
‘Hail, Brother-Apothecary,’ Scalprum greeted Nestor. ‘I think you will be using your bolt pistol more than your narthecium in this battle.’
‘I share your confidence, brother-sergeant,’ replied Nestor. Flexing his left fingers, Nestor activated the narthecium gauntlet, a whirring bonesaw spinning into life beneath his fist. ‘Of course, the narthecium can be used to wound as well as heal, brother. I am glad that Master Belial saw fit to despatch me to your side with such speed.’
Scalprum laughed.
‘It did give me a moment’s pause for thought when I saw that Thunderhawk landing and only you walking down the ramp,’ said the sergeant. ‘I wondered if perhaps there was something Master Belial was not telling us!’
‘Rest assured that my hasty entrance was only made possible because I had been tending to our wounded behind the front line in the city. Those who are more involved are proving difficult to extricate without unnecessary risk.’
‘I heard the same from Brother Sarpedon,’ said Scalprum. ‘With the strength of the Lion to protect us, I think that our battle-brothers will arrive to find the battle already won.’
‘Let us hope that is the case,’ replied Nestor. ‘Has there been any update from Sergeant Aquila?’
Scalprum’s armour whined as he shook his head.
‘No, there has been nothing more from Aquila since we received his last transmission early this morning,’ said the sergeant. ‘There was some sporadic fighting about two hours ago, at the foot of the ridge. If we had not sent the Rhinos back to Kadillus to pick up the reinforcements, we might have intervened. As it was, there was nothing we could do from here. Though I hope I am wrong, I believe our brothers in the Ravenwing and Tenth Company have made the ultimate sacrifice bringing us warning of the ork advance.’
Nestor looked out across the brightening slope and wondered what had become of Aquila and the others. Two of the Ravenwing squadron had not yet had their progenoid glands removed for the Chapter stores. Containing the gene-seed of the Dark Angels, these implants were vital to the creation of future generations of Astartes.
‘When we have pushed back the greenskins, we will conduct a search and ensure the bodies of our fallen brethren are attended to by the proper rites,’ said the Apothecary.
The thought brought something else to Nestor’s mind and he turned back to Scalprum. He opened the data panel in the side of the bulky narthecium enclosing his left forearm and hand. Tapping in a sequence of digits, he brought up a list of names.
‘If my records are correct, Brothers Anduriel, Mephael, Saboath and Zarael still have progenoid glands intact,’ said the Apothecary.
‘That is correct,’ replied Scalprum. He stabbed a finger to three of the Devastators in the emplacement with them. ‘Mephael, Saboath and Zarael are here, you’ll find Anduriel in the other combat squad.’
‘I am sure they will continue to guard the Chapter’s due for some time to come, until we may relieve them of their burden in more peaceful circumstances,’ said Nestor, retracting the blade of the narthecium. ‘Your squad was involved in the fighting in Kadillus Harbour. Is there anything else I should be aware of?’
Scalprum looked at his squad, one hand resting on the holstered bolt pistol at his waist.
‘There is nothing acute that needs tending to. Saboath has a crack in his left femur, Hasmal has a laceration to his right side and Anahel has a torn preomnor that has been causing him some discomfort.’
Nestor nodded as he committed these facts to his memory. As rugged as Space Marine physiology was, the intrusive treatments and surgery of battlefield medicine were always a short-term measure. Being unaware of an existing injury or condition greatly increased the risks of any intervention. Sometimes it came down to preserving the life of a battle-brother for a few hours whilst knowing that the treatment itself would kill him later. Such were the hard lessons of the Apothecarion, and Nestor’s tutor, Brother Mennion, had talked at length regarding the difficult decisions every Apothecary would face.
It was these minutes and hours before battle that always tested Nestor’s resolve, more than the blood and shouts of the wounded. When battle was in motion, training and experience ensured that Nestor acted without hesitation, and could make such harsh decisions without a moment’s remorse or reflection. In the cold, quiet time before and after battle, it was far harder to be so dispassionate.
Nestor excused himself from the Devastators and found a patch of shade behind a jutting pillar of rock. He looked south, where the Koth Ridge dropped dramatically down to end in cliffs, beneath which the Piscina Ocean crashed against jagged rocks. Further out, the sheet of blue seemed still, untouched by the conflict that had engulfed this small upthrust of land.
He took a deep breath and absorbed the calm radiating from the sea. He pushed away the bleak thoughts of what injuries might befall the brothers behind him – painful fates that he knew with microscopic precision – and quietly recited the Litanies of Diagnosis, Salvation and Mercy.
While he strengthened his will with these words, part of Nestor detected the approaching growl of engines and the stronger presence of hydrocarbons carried on the wind from the east. The comm chimed in his ear and Sarpedon’s calm tones cut t
hrough Nestor’s recital of the Prayers of Battle.
‘Enemy in sight. Zero-three-fifty. Devastator range in one minute. Our faith is our shield.’
Nestor unholstered his bolt pistol and headed back to his place in the line.
His autosenses darkening to filter out the bright morning sun, Nestor watched the Devastators performing their duty. The ork army was approaching in two waves: a swift-moving body of vehicles followed some distance behind by their infantry.
Nestor could see that the greenskin approach was fatally flawed. Carried away by their enthusiasm for battle, the bike riders and buggy crews raced ahead of the main force. It was probable that the ork commander wished to use the faster elements of the force to occupy the Koth Ridge defenders while the foot-slogging ork warriors moved up the slope. In theory that was not such a bad decision, but Nestor could tell at a glance that the plan would not work; the ork light vehicles were not numerous enough nor carried enough firepower to face the Space Marines and Free Militia force on their own.
Though dozens of ork vehicles streamed up the slope leaving plumes of smoke and dust in their wake, the defenders had every advantage of position and elevation. The lascannons of the Free Militia opened fire first, streaks of blue energy lancing down the ridge at the oncoming vehicles. The firing was premature and somewhat inaccurate but several half-tracked bikes were turned into smouldering piles of slag by the blasts. The brak-brak-brak of autocannons joined the rip of laser energy splitting the air. Grass and mud and stone and metal and flesh were sent flying along the slope in almost equal measure as the guns stitched their mark across the rock-strewn ridge.
With a deep thrumming, Brother Saboath charged up his plasma cannon. Coils glowed bluish-white with the build-up of energy and sparks danced from the vented muzzle of his weapon. Without haste, he altered his aim a little to the right. Nestor followed the muzzle of the gun and saw a squadron of war buggies racing recklessly up the slope, bouncing across rocks and narrow fissures.
With an explosive wave of compressing air, Saboath fired. A miniature star erupted from the plasma cannon, casting harsh shadows as it flew down the slope to crash into the foremost buggy. The vehicle’s engine block disintegrated in a shower of molten metal and super-heated fuel, the vapour of which ignited, engulfing the vehicle in a sheet of blue fire, incinerating the driver and gunner, melting the tyres and warping the chassis. The wreck smashed to pieces on a boulder, hurling burning oil and red-hot bolts across the thin grass. Patches of smoking plastic and cooling metal dotted the mud and rocks amongst the spreading patches of fire.
‘Good hit, brother,’ said Nestor.
‘The first shot is always the easiest,’ replied Saboath.
Another ball of ravening energy seared down the slope from the other combat squad, punching clean through the side of another buggy to erupt from the other side in a spray of molten steel and liquefied flesh. The whine of the plasma cannons’ generators grew in pitch as the weapons recharged.
‘Mark target at fifty-three-five, seven hundred metres,’ announced Sergeant Scalprum. Nestor realised the Devastator sergeant was using the broad-address frequency, talking to the Free Militia as well as the Dark Angels.
He looked in the direction described by Scalprum and saw a few dozen smaller greenskin slaves – the gretchin – manoeuvring crude artillery pieces into position behind a cluster of low rocks. Two of the war machines were large-bore cannons mounted on wheeled platforms. Another appeared to be some kind of engine-powered catapult. There were two other war machines: large rail-mounted missiles, each twice the size of a Space Marine. The gretchin crews, whipped into action by burly ork overseers in heavy masks, jostled and struggled to point their artillery up the slope.
Nestor heard the multiple pops of mortars firing from the sandbagged enclaves behind him, in response to Scalprum’s instructions. Craning his neck, he followed the blur of the bombs sailing into the overcast sky and watched them fall on the ork war machine position. Half the bombardment fell short, exploding harmlessly against the rocks, but four or five bombs landed in and around the big guns, shredding the crews with shrapnel, dismounting one of the crude rockets.
All along the ridge to the left and right, the Dark Angels and Free Militia poured fire into the attacking orks. Smoking wrecks and charred green corpses littered the slope, where fires were growing in strength, crawling up the ridge towards the defenders, hurried on by the prevailing wind. The smoke was as much a hindrance to the orks as the defence troops as bikes crashed onto unseen rocks and buggies tipped into hidden gorges; the Devastators had no problems seeing their targets, the thermal vision of their autosenses cutting through the thickening bank of smoke as easily as their plasma cannons cut through the armour of the ork vehicles.
To the north, Nestor’s left, the crack of ork guns intensified. Half a dozen buggies raced along the ridge parallel to the defenders’ line, machine guns and cannons ripping into sandbags and punching holes into the dirt-filled crates and boxes protecting the defence force. Here and there an incautious trooper fell back bloodied, but for the most part the soldiers kept their heads down and the furious fusillade passed over them or was stopped by the makeshift barricades.
A strange whistle cut through the hammer and clamour of fighting, attracting Nestor’s attention. Corkscrewing wildly, the remaining ork rocket flew up through the cloud trailing flames and sparks. The defence troopers turned tripod-mounted heavy stubbers to the sky, tracer bullets leaping up to meet the arcing missile. This fire missed its mark and the rocket completed its rising course and dipped sharply towards the ridgeline.
The steady roar of heavy bolters erupted close to Nestor as the Devastators opened up on a squadron of bikes that had come within range. The Apothecary ignored the ork vehicles racing closer to the Devastators’ position and kept fixed on the trajectory of the missile. Beneath it, troopers hurled themselves to the ground, throwing themselves into foxholes and slit trenches.
The rocket landed behind the front line of defenders, crashing to the rocks in the middle of a mortar battery. The impact threw up a huge plume of mud and rock shards but there was no explosion. At first Nestor thought the warhead had failed to detonate, but as shaken men popped up their heads, looking around in disbelief, the ground began to vibrate. A pulse of green energy erupted from the crater where the rocket had landed, rippling through the air and ground.
Where the green wave touched something, it tossed the man or object into the air, shaking apart guns and hurling troopers tens of metres into the sky, bones snapping, limbs contorting unnaturally. Nestor could feel the weak edges of the vibration through his feet and the particles of dirt on the crate barricade danced with the reverberations. The pulse disappeared and the unfortunate troops that had been picked up dropped to the ground like stones, their falls breaking necks, cracking open skulls and crushing organs.
Nestor could see a dozen soldiers not moving, twice that number rolling around or trying to crawl to safety. Secondary detonations from the cache of bombs popped inside the mortar pit, scattering metal fragments through the survivors.
A glance to his right confirmed to Nestor that the Devastators’ position was still secure: the tangled wreckage of five bikes smoked and sparked further down the slope, the closest at least three hundred metres away. He was about to set off towards the injured troopers to see if he could assist when the rocket pulsed again. The shockwave was slower this time but more violent; the ground rippled like a pool when a stone has been tossed into it. Dirt and rocks exploded in a growing circle, hurling more troopers from their feet; the barricades they had laboured so hard to erect were cast down by the pulse, shallow trenches collapsing, burying those inside with stones and dirt.
Into this devastation roared buggies and warbikes, guns blazing. Nestor saw a young officer pull himself to his feet, straighten his cap and then collapse again as a hail of bullets ripped into his chest and gut. The handful of mortar crew that had luckily survived the rocket impact dragge
d themselves across the ground, bullets tearing trails around them. A youthful trooper leapt bravely over a wall of sandbags, a grenade in hand. His face disappeared into a bloody mush and the primed grenade flew from his fingers, exploding amongst his squad mates.
Their drivers cackling, buggies veered and swerved through the emplacements, bouncing over the dead and wounded, crunching bones beneath their wheels, guns hammering a staccato beat of death. A small ork half-track roared through the chaos, a fuel tank trailer bouncing madly behind it. Flames licked from its barrel-shaped turret, indiscriminately setting fire to ammunition stores and troopers. Burning men flailed through their fellow troopers, spreading the panic.
Nestor set off at a run, bolt pistol ready. Behind him he heard Scalprum barking orders at the split combat squad, directing their fire along the ridgeline. Just ahead of the Apothecary, Sergeant Vigilus and his Terminators advanced through the breach in the line, storm bolters roaring, the flickering of rounds blurred against the dancing flames. Reinforcements poured in from further up the line, great-coated officers bellowing at their men to take up the empty positions. Having wreaked considerable carnage, the ork vehicles screeched away back down the slope, evading the vengeance of the Dark Angels and Piscina troopers arriving at the break in the defences.
Nestor arrived as the Deathwing took up a firing position within one of the half-ruined emplacements. The Apothecary saw nothing but charred bodies within and moved on, heading for the mortar pit. A choking sob to his right drew Nestor’s attention and he slowed to search through mangled bodies sprawled between the rocks and boxes. A trooper surged from a pile of corpses, one leg trailing uselessly after him, his face masked with drying blood.
